How Introductory STEM Courses Weed Out Blacks and Other Underrepresented Students
Researchers found the association between low performance in an introductory STEM class and failure to obtain a STEM degree is stronger for Black and other underrepresented minority students than for other students, even after controlling for academic preparation in high school and intent to obtain a STEM degree.
Are State Licensing Exams Unfairly Keeping Blacks From the Teacher Workforce?
A new study by Alexander Cuenca, an associate professor in the School of Education at Indiana University, finds that the state licensing examination has the effect of shrinking the pool of nonwhite educators that enter the profession even as the K-12 student population grows more diverse.
Black Medical Students Are Less Likely Than Their White Peers to Be Selected for...
The study, led by scholars at the Yale School of Medicine, found that the least likely to be placed in graduate medical education residency programs were Black or African American and Hispanic male students. Black female students and Hispanic female students also had much higher rates of not placing compared to White students.
What Would Have Been the Most Effective Strategy for the COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout?
Using a supercomputer, researchers analyzed 2.9 million vaccination rollout strategies to determine what would have produced the lowest rates of infection and death. They found that prioritizing vaccine rollouts to people of color, particularly older African Americans may have been the best strategy.
Scores on the ACT College Entrance Examination Drop and Large Racial Gap Persists
For the fifth year in a row, the average score for African American students dropped. The most striking statistic is that only 5 percent of all Black test takers were rated ready for college-level courses in all four areas of English, mathematics, science, and reading. Whites were nearly six times as likely as Blacks to be prepared for college-level work in all four areas.
In African American Doctoral Awards, Women Gained and Men Saw a Drop in 2021
Of the 2,431 African Americans who earned doctorates from U.S. universities in 2021, 1,552 were women. Thus, women earned 63.8 percent of all doctorates awarded to African Americans in 2021. This is up from 62.3 percent in 2020. The number of African American men who earned doctorates in 2021 was the lowest number since 2017.
Black Enrollments in Higher Education Are Down But Not as Much as White Enrollments
A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center finds that Black enrollments are down by 1.6 percent this fall compared to a year ago. White enrollments have dropped by 3.6 percent. Since 2020, Black enrollments have declined by 6.9 percent compared to 9.6 percent for Whites.
Academic Disciplines Where African Americans Received Few or No Doctorates in 2021
African Americans earned only 1.4 percent of all doctorates awarded in mathematics and 1.2 percent of all doctorates in physics that were awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents in 2021. Blacks earned 4 percent of all doctorates in computer science, 4 percent of all doctorates in chemistry, and only 4.1 percent of all doctorates awarded in engineering disciplines.
The Persisting Racial Gap in Scores on the SAT College Entrance Examination
The results showed that only 19 percent of African American test takers met the college and career readiness benchmark for both reading and mathematics, the lowest level of any racial or ethnic group. Some 53 percent of Whites met the readiness benchmarks in both reading and mathematics. Some 54 percent of all Black test takers did not meet the minimum benchmark in either reading or mathematics. For Whites, the figure was 21 percent.
College-Educated Black Women Have Fewer Children Than Their White Peers
Overall, they found that college-educated women across racial and ethnic groups have fewer children than those who did not graduate college. The difference in fertility between college-educated Black and White women is driven mainly by the smaller proportion of Black mothers giving birth to a second child, the study found.
The Very Wide Racial Gap in College Graduation Rates
New data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that nearly 68 percent of all White students entering four-year colleges seeking a bachelor's degree in 2015 had graduated within six years. But only 45.7 percent of Black students had earned a bachelor's degree within six years. The racial gap was even larger at price, not-for-profit colleges and universities.
Study Finds Black Medical Students Publish Less Scholarly Research Than Their White Peers
In a new study of medical school students, researchers at Yale University found that there were only slight differences between Whites and members of underrepresented groups in research experience. But Black medical school students had 15 percent fewer publications than their White peers.
Vast Racial Differences in the Financing of Doctoral Education
Only 19.4 percent of all African Americans who earned doctorates in 2021 had no education-related debt when they earned their terminal degree. For Whites, 51.7 percent had no education-related debt. The median education debt for Whites was $45,000. African Americans who earned doctorates in 2021, had an average student debt of $110,000.
Racial Differences in the Age of Doctoral Degree Recipients in the United States
On average, Whites who earned doctorates in 2021 were 31.4 years old when they received their doctoral degrees. For African Americans, the average age was 36.6. Some 24.7 percent of all Blacks who earned doctorates in 2021 were over the age of 45. For Whites earning doctorates in 2021, only 8.7 percent were over the age of 45.
Study Finds a Huge Advantage in Appraisal Values for Homes in White Neighborhoods
A new study from sociologists at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis finds that homes today in White neighborhoods are appraised at double the value of comparable homes in communities of color. This represents a 75 percent increase in neighborhood racial inequality in home values over the last decade.
How Whites Continue to Hold Major Advantages in College President Searches
A new report prepared by Bensimons & Associates for the California Futures Foundation finds that whiteness "is embedded at every stage of presidential search and selection processes. The racial-ethnic and gender makeup of the presidents of California's public colleges and universities are much the same as in the 1970s: almost exclusively white and male."
Don’t Blame History for Black Americans’ Mistrust of the Healthcare System
New research by psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles shows that vaccine hesitancy and mistrust of medical professionals among Black Americans may hinge more on their current unsatisfactory healthcare experiences than on their knowledge of past wrongs.
African Americans Are Overrepresented in Law Enforcement’s Crime Posts on Social Media
Researchers at the law schools of Duke University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago examined close to 100,000 crime-related posts from 14,000 Facebook pages maintained by U.S. law enforcement agencies between 2010 and 2019. They found that these posts overrepresented Black suspects by 25 percentage points relative to local arrest rates.
The Significant Racial Gap in Marriage Rates in the United States
In 2021, nearly 54 percent of the White population over the age of 15 was married compared to 31.2 percent of the Black population. Only 27.5 percent of the White population had never been married compared to half of the Black population.
The Racial Graduation Rate Gap Between All Students and Student Athletes
For White students who entered college between 2012 and 2015 on an athletic scholarship, 73 percent earned their degree from the same institution within six years. For Black student athletes in the same period, 59 percent earned their degree within six years at the same school. This gap is significantly less than the racial gap for students as a whole.
The Large Racial Gap in Educational Attainment Rates, Particularly for Men
In 2021, 28.7 percent of African Americans over the age of 25 had obtained at least a bachelor's degree. For Whites, the figure was 41.9 percent. White men were nearly twice as likely as Black men to hold an advanced degree.
Study Finds Foods Companies Increasingly Marketing Unhealthy Products to Blacks
American food and beverage companies disproportionately target Black and Hispanic consumers with advertising for high-calorie, low-nutrient products, including candy, sugary drinks, and snacks, according to a new study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health at the University of Connecticut.
Blacks Student Athletes Have Made Gains in Graduation Rates, But a Racial Gap Persists
In 1991, only 33 percent of Black male student athletes on scholarship at NCAA Division I institutions earned their diplomas within six years. Today, the graduation rate for Black male student athletes is 55 percent. For Black women student athletes on scholarship at these schools, the graduation rate was 45 percent in 1991. Today, it is 67 percent
Study Finds That After 40 Years the Stillbirth Rate for Blacks Remains Double the...
A new study led by Cande Ananth, chief of epidemiology and biostatistics in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, finds that the decades-long effort to lower the stillbirth rate in the United States has stalled, as has progress in closing a persistent gap in stillbirths experienced by Black women compared with White women.
Students From Sub-Saharan African Nations at U.S. Colleges and Universities, 2021-22
During the 2021-22 academic year there were 42,518 students from sub-Saharan Africa enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States. They made up 4.5 percent of all foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities that year. This was the highest number of students from sub-Saharan Africa in history.
Sub-Saharan African Nations Sending the Most Scholars to Teach at U.S. Colleges and Universities
In the 2020-21 academic year, there were 1,483 scholars from sub-Saharan African nations teaching at U.S. colleges and universities. Due to the pandemic, this was down more than 24 percent from the previous academic year. Foreign scholars from sub-Saharan Africa made up only 1.7 percent of all foreign scholars teaching in the U.S. in the 2020-21 academic year.
Study Led by Emory University Scholar Documents Alarming Racial Gap in Firearm-Related Homicides
Most alarming is that rates of fatalities by homicide amongst Black non-Hispanic men (141.8 fatalities/100,000 persons) significantly outpaced rates of fatalities among White non-Hispanic men (6.3 fatalities/100,000). Among Black non-Hispanic females, the rate of fatalities by firearm-related homicide has more than tripled since 2010.
The Education Trust Issues a New Report on Faculty Diversity
Researchers compared the Black percentage of the student body to the Black percentage of faculty at a large number of state-operated universities. They found that only 13.4 percent of these educational institutions had a Black-faculty-to-Black-student ratio of 90 percent or more. More than 70 percent of these institutions had a Black-faculty-to-Black-student ratio of below 70 percent.
University of Delaware Research Examines Impact of Highway Construction on Black Neighborhoods
In 1957, the Wilmington city council voted to bring Interstate 95 right through the Adams-Jackson corridor in the downtown area. In all, 507 residential dwellings, 50 commercial structures, 48 garages, two churches, one public school, one private school and one theater were demolished — and 926 families displaced — to make way for the highway.
How the COVID-19 Pandemic Impacted the Racial Gap in Unemployment
In 2020, when the pandemic struck, 19.4 percent of the Black civilian workforce (those who were employed or seeking work) experienced unemployment at some point during the year. More than 4.2 million Black workers were unemployed at some point during the year.
New Study Shows a Persistent Racial Gap in Funding of National Science Foundation Grants
Overall, the study examines more than 1 million proposals reviewed by the National Science Foundation from 1996 to 2019. Proposals by White applicants were consistently funded by several percentage points above the national rate, and the disparity increased steadily through the years in the analysis. In 2013 and 2014, research proposals by White applicants were funded at 1.7 and 1.8 times the rate of those by Black applicants.
A Severe Lack of Teacher Diversity in the Nation’s K-12 Schools
A new report from the U.S. Department of Education finds that 80 percent of the nation's K-12 teachers are White, while only 45 percent of the students in these schools are White. African Americans are 6.1 percent of all teachers in public schools but 15 percent of all students.
African Americans Are Making Progress in Medical School Enrollments
In 2022, there were 9,630 African Americans enrolled at U.S. medical schools. They made up 10 percent of total enrollments. In 2015, Blacks were 7.2 percent of total enrollments. Since 2015, the number of Blacks enrolled in U.S. medical schools is up by nearly 54 percent.
Study Finds a Significant Lack of Diversity in Participants in Psychophysiology Studies
Many methods for collecting physiological data use electrodes placed directly on the skin. But these technologies were developed to work best with physical attributes most commonly associated with White people, like light-colored skin and thin straight hair.
The Rate of Workplace Fatalities for Black Americans Reaches an All-Time High
In 2021, 653 African Americans died from work-related injuries. This was up 20.7 percent from 2020. African Americans made up 12.6 percent of all work-related fatalities due to injury. This was the highest percentage recorded since statistics on workplace fatalities have been collected.
Black Enrollments in Post-Pandemic Higher Education
In October 2021, there were 2,717.000 African Americans enrolled in higher education. They made up 15.7 percent of all enrollments in higher education. Black women made up 65 percent of all African American enrollments in higher education.
